Named 'Office 2021' - breaking a naming precedent by using the current year for a suite introduced in that year's second half - it will be the only edition available at retail or direct from Microsoft for non-volume licensing customers.

That date will also be the release date for the consumer and small business version of Office LTSC 2021. The Windows version will run on both Windows 10 and the impending Windows 11, which is to debut Oct. Office LTSC 2021 is available only via volume licensing and comes in versions of differing composition for Windows and macOS. Teams Exploratory, for example, is a 12-month trial that requires customers to upgrade to a Microsoft 365 plan to continue using the collaboration platform. 'Office LTSC 2021 includes the Teams client app, but only includes the free or the Exploratory service for Microsoft Teams,' Microsoft acknowledged. One of the most puzzling constraints on Office LTSC 2021 is its exclusion of a full license to Teams, the most-hyped product/service in Microsoft's inventory since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. 'Microsoft won't provide code fixes to resolve non-security related problems,' the company spelled out on an online informational page. That support will consist of security updates and apparently only security updates. According to Microsoft's support lifecycle site, Office LTSC 2021 will receive support to Oct. The most notable new limitation to this iteration? A dramatic decrease in support: Office LTSC 2021 will be supported for only five years, half the time of most past Office suites (and two years shorter than the truncated-before-launch Office 2019). It openly puts policies on perpetual license versions or limits what the software can do to push customers toward subscriptions. Microsoft vastly prefers customers opt for the subscription plans of those latter product names because the revenue is first, never-ending and second, regular and thus knowable (more or less) in advance). These characteristics are just some of Office LTSC's that Microsoft has long used to cast the perpetual license as second-class (or even third-class) when compared to the rent-not-buy Office 365 and Microsoft 365.

Office 2021 volume license